Portable electronic devices, such as mobile phones, tablet computers, multimedia devices, and the like often include multimedia capabilities that enable a user to capture images (e.g., digital photos), record video, and/or communicate using communication features of a device. To implement these multimedia capabilities, the portable devices are implemented with a camera device that can be used to capture the images, which are then processed and saved as digital photos. Often, the quality of the captured and saved digital photos is dependent on the image processing features of the camera device, and users typically want the highest-resolution quality images for viewing and sharing.
Some camera devices that are implemented as a digital camera or as a component of a portable device, such as a mobile phone, are designed for high dynamic range (HDR) imaging to capture digital photos having a greater dynamic range. This can be accomplished by capturing different exposures of the same subject matter at different exposure levels, and then combining the different exposures to generate a digital photo. Generally, an HDR camera device can be implemented with a monochromatic sensor to capture a clear image in monochrome, and implemented with a Bayer sensor that is a color filter array having an interlaced HDR pattern to capture red, green, or blue color for individual pixels in a Bayer image. The clear image and the Bayer image can then be combined to generate an HDR digital photo of higher quality.